Hawkeye Marching Band - History

History

The Hawkeye Marching Band was founded in 1881 in order to provide music for the State University of Iowa Battalion. During this time, members of the band would undergo the same training as their military counterparts. However, over the years, the military and band would gradually grow into separate entities. Because of this growing rift between the two organizations, the marching band became more of a form of entertainment than a military group by the year 1929, the same year that Kinnick Stadium was completed.

Around this time, when the distinction between the military and the marching band grew larger, the band began to perform for more public events, rather than the military gatherings of the past. The Iowa marching band, like other Big Ten bands, began to make appearances at concerts, University ceremonies, and football games. During the mid-twentieth century, the band adopted a very militaristic style of marching. Marchers were expected to march with crack precision and the band's director during that time, Frederick C. Ebbs, eliminated any flags or twirlers that the band had used up to that point.

In 1973, Morgan Jones became director of the Hawkeye Marching Band and once again changed the style and look of the band. Jones added a line of flag twirlers and six other twirlers to accompany the featured twirler. Jones also changed the style of music played. The band began to perform different styles of music, easygoing slow music and loud fast-paced music, as well as displaying both abstract formations and recognizable patterns on the field. The Hawkeye Marching Band was widely regarded as one of the few bands that effectively executed all of these things. After the 1990 season, the band was awarded the prestigious John Philip Sousa Foundation Sudler Trophy. The 1990 season and the Sudler Trophy would mark the end of the Morgan Jones era for the HMB. Jones' 18 year period as director was one of the most successful in the history of the Hawkeye Marching Band.

The band went through three different directors during the next few years and included a brief return by Morgan Jones during the mid-1990s. In the summer of 1998, the band found its next permanent director in Kevin Kastens, current HMB director and former director of the Marching Mizzou from the University of Missouri, as well as the Marching Hundred, from Indiana University.